When I looked at my dessert plate and saw the chocolate cake speckled with raspberry juice, it seemed to me that someone was pouring more and more red sauce than usual...
Call Me By Your Name, André Aciman
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If we’ve had a conversation in the past couple of months, there’s a good chance I’ve told you to read Call Me By Your Name. I read it in November in a single sitting, jumping up every now and then to attend to a conveyer belt of cakes going into and out of the oven. I emerged from the book somewhere near 4am, as I placed the final cake onto a cooling rack. A love story set on the Italian Riviera in the 1980s, it is so evocative, of Italy and summertime. Reading it made me want to be a better, bolder, and braver person. It’s rare to walk away from a book feeling genuinely changed, but I was by this one.
The book captures, so beautifully, the stultifying, soporific nature of summer; the listlessness; the days spent lying languid by a pool with books, with the bursts of energy in the late afternoon, suddenly desperate for something to do. I have recently returned to summer - my first Australian one in nearly 10 years. The heat has been sitting heavily on us this week, easing only once the sun starts to sink from the sky. And I’ve spent it struck by the similarities between my mum’s garden and Elio’s:
I loved the afternoons best: the scent of rosemary, the heat, the birds, the cicadas, the sway of palm fronds, the silence that fell like a light linen shawl on an appalling sunny day...
My mum’s house has a rosemary tree in the front garden, which has had nearly two decades to send its roots deep. She gives great handfuls of it to people who drop by to visit, but can never get rid of it fast enough. We use it in as many dishes as possible, and it it is a welcome presence in the cake I make most often: the Winnie-the-Pooh inspired cakes that are in my book. In summer, I generally have to be persuaded to eat dessert - rejecting anything heavier than a scoop of gelato (or a single, ripe peach). But this cake is special: while it is undeniably rich, it is also not cloying or heavy. With a sharp fruit – the raspberries suggested in the book are perfect – it is more than appropriate for a balmy afternoon. And if it is currently winter where you are, it would also be lovely with some poached rhubarb or roasted pears.
Chocolate, rosemary, and hazelnut cake
Serves 10
Ingredients
200g butter
250g dark chocolate (70% is good here)
50ml extra virgin olive oil
250g caster sugar
4 eggs
250g hazelnuts (whole, if you have a spice grinder, or ground)
Pinch salt
Two 20cm stalks of rosemary
Equipment
Saucepan and heatproof bowl
Mixing bowl
Spice grinder (optional)
Whisk
23cm springform cake tin
Spatula
1. Preheat the oven to 180C (160 fan). Grease and line the tin – thoroughly, as the cake is delicate and will be tricky to get out of the tin if it sticks. Melt the butter in the heatproof bowl over a pan of simmering water. Chop the chocolate into small chunks and add to the bowl, stirring until the chocolate has melted. Add the olive oil, stir and set aside.
2. Separate the eggs. Whisk the yolks and sugar together in the mixing bowl until pale. Whisk in the butter, chocolate and oil.
3. Blitz the hazelnuts finely, in batches, adding the leaves from the rosemary to the final batch. If you are using ground hazelnuts, chop the rosemary as finely as you can. Fold the ground hazelnuts and the rosemary into the cake batter.
4. Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks. Fold a third into the cake batter to loosen it, then fold the rest in very gently. Tip into the lined cake tin.
5. Bake for 45 minutes, until a skewer inserted into the cake comes out clean. Leave to cool and settle in the tin for at least 20 minutes. Dust with cocoa and serve warm or at room temperature.
